#until she retired and transed her gender

[crazy-grrrl-on-the-computer]

Okay, sorry for suddenly appearing, but I'm too curious for my own sake. There are posts you tag with some of your OC and now I'm interested in Dark and Justice. Both are that kind of pair I would love.

I AM SO SORRY IT HAS BEEN 84 YEARS AND SO MUCH HAS CHANGED, BUT I PROMISE THEY’RE EVEN COOLER NOW!

JUSTICE TRANSED HIS WHOLE IDENTITY AND IS NOW A VAMPIRE NAMED DAMIEN, AND DARK MURDERED HIS EVIL EX AND STOLE HIS NAME //WHOOPS

Aaaah, thank you for asking about the murder babes!!!!! ;;3;; But please, you never have to apologize for asking about my OCs~ I love talking about them and I’m really glad you were curious for more information even if I somehow entirely forgot to post the original reply I had typed up before everything changed and only just recently rediscovered this Ask still floating around in my inbox!

Dark is my OC and Damien belongs to my friend @dirtflavoredcoke (you can find more OC-related stuff on their @kieranocemporium blog)

The ship has a new tag on my blog now to represent the new era and also because of just how much has changed about Damien’s backstory!

Warning: There is a massive chunk of text with accompanying art below the cut! ^^

Damien was born human to a farming family in Geneva, New York alongside his sister, Quinn, sometime during the early 1900s (1896, to be exact). Their father had hoped for many children, particularly boys, to help out around the farm but was disappointed that it appeared he had two daughters. “Appeared” being the keyword because little did they know that the promiscuous boy-crazy eldest who was caught on at least one occasion with the hired farm hand in the loft was a boy the entire time. This, of course, Quinn knew and accepted even if she didn’t fully understand her brother yet.

Although their father would have preferred him to “focus on becoming a proper lady and wife”, Damien began a career as a sex worker despite the growing risk of imprisonment that came with the US government’s rising concern about prostitution and the spread of venereal diseases brought on by the first World War. Also, he may or may not have endured some pregnancy-related trauma (miscarriage or abortion) while working that job. Either way, it is safe to presume that this wasn’t the first or last era where he would serve some amount of jail time for offenses including but possibly not limited to public intoxication, obscenity, and patronizing speakeasies during Prohibition.

But by the 1920s, Damien was dying from tuberculosis and, short of better options for survival, he allowed his vampire partner at the time to bite him and save his life. Damien had hoped that turning would allow him to spend more time with Quinn, since he had always felt quite protective of her (an understatement for sure), but he wound up having to leave her behind for her own protection, so his family assumed he had simply died from the illness. (He would later find out that Quinn would run away in grief and be turned without consent by a different vampire that same year, but they wouldn’t reunite until many decades later.)

Unfortunately, Damien’s taste in men had proven to be less than stellar, so after getting what he wanted (the bite) he left his asshole partner in the dust to figure out life as a vampire on his own. This was much easier said than done, but it did allow him to finally start transitioning socially and later, as gender-affirming care advanced in the states, he would begin to transition medically too. At some point along the way, he took up escort work until he decided to “retire” from the working life because he is admittedly too lazy to work and doesn’t think he should have to.

But this is where the backstory gets a bit blurry to my knowledge, so I will leave that up to Kieran to clarify.

Dark, birth name Ezra, is a poltergeist. I’m still working out the details of his backstory from when he was alive, but so far I’ve decided that he is descended from Italian immigrants who came to US America during the first Italian diaspora (+ he’s Irish on his mother’s side) and he died sometime in 1960s New York.

A combination of unchecked mental health struggles and a repressive Catholic upbringing during a high-tension war era already rife with racial prejudices bred just the right conditions for a rebellious streak in him. He gravitated toward the greaser subculture and acted out in ways that didn’t exactly win him many points with his contemporaries, but he was less concerned about fitting in and more focused on proving that he was his own person. Ezra had his eye on a girl, but her older brother did not approve of him and consistently tried to get between them. Eventually, in the heat of a confrontation, Ezra snapped and killed them both. While on the run, he was ultimately killed in a shootout with the police.

In hindsight, he realized much later that he had probably been trying to use the relationship to get close to her brother too but had mistaken that desire for jealousy and acted out in rage. That rage connected with his violent end is what wound up turning him into a poltergeist, which has ironically given him a lot of time to reflect through the decades and discover himself as a person via unhindered exposure to different types of people he had previously never been able to know or conceive of.

At some point, he wound up drawn to a psychic alongside four other poltergeists. A psychic’s purpose in what I call the Extended Monster Universe is more or less to act as a therapist to spirits who need to move on, but given that Lexy was only in high school and barely aware of this ability… she wasn’t exactly the best at it. But because she was determined for them all to get along and wasn’t picky about what she called her new poltergeist friends, Ezra started using Dark as an alias to avoid the irritating ordeal of being known. Unfortunately, there was an exorcist-in-training at her school who sniffed them out rather quickly. It took Dustin a while to bypass Lexy’s determination to keep her friends safe, but he eventually managed to trap them all in a spirit orb and pass them off to his older siblings – Lila and Brentley, two bounty hunters who specialize in artifacts.

It was in transit that they literally bumped into Jesse, a nobody trying to escape a bad situation, accidentally breaking the spirit orb and allowing the weakened poltergeists to seek refuse in his body. Terrified and confused, Jesse continued running and only later found out that he had somehow become a share soul for five very different poltergeists with very conflicting personalities. What this meant was that, in their desperation for safety, they had temporarily attached themselves to his soul for stability until they could regain enough of their power to figure out how to leave… and they were fighting for control. Sympathizing with them to an extent and realizing that they were on the run from the same people, Jesse made a deal with them that he would help the poltergeists find a way to escape if they helped him to avoid the bounty hunters who might do him harm for winding up in the middle of their mess.

A cross-dressing rom-com adventure unfolded from there as the poltergeists took turns attempting to resolve the “bad situation” Jesse had initially been running from and help him seduce Brentley once they realized a relationship could garner them access to artifacts that might release them from Jesse’s body. The romance wound up being more real than anyone was expecting and once again Dark was pushed to come to terms with his own sexuality. In any case, Jesse pulled through for them and the poltergeists made a break for it back out into the world at the first opportunity. From there, Dark no longer cared what happened to the other four or where they ended up (he would later on learn that at least three of them found their way back to Lexy for old time’s sake) – he felt more powerful than ever and he was going to make that the world’s problem.

This is more or less when Dark met Damien.

[This is where I would insert art of them together, if I had any recent ship art for them, but I wanted to get this reply out there sooner rather than later. ;;n;;]

One night, Dark happened to interrupt a vampire’s dinner. Seeing as he was already dead and harboring his own urge to kill, he decided that the smartest course of action would be to use the threat of exposure to blackmail Damien into letting him in on these hunts.

Of course he didn’t realize it for a long while, but practically from the moment he opened his mouth Damien already wanted a piece of him. The way Damien saw it, it was real cute that a cocky poltergeist thought he cared about something as inconsequential to him as exposure, but he did prefer his men to be the “take charge” type and what better aphrodisiac could there be than bloody murder.

Playing his newfound partner for sport seemed to be exactly what Dark wanted… until their accompliceship turned into a flirtationship (no thanks to Damien’s dirty mouth), which found its way to the bedroom (figuratively speaking). To say that Dark wasn’t the best at flirting/relationships would be an understatement, as most people think he is too awkward and blunt, but he’s a quick and willing learner. If he hadn’t recently spent so much time in the body of someone who was very accustomed to casual friendly flirtation, he might have picked up on Damien’s attraction to him sooner.

But eventually it did slip out and Dark figured that, if playing house together satisfied Damien enough to give him what he wanted, he could make this  new development work for him. Damien’s feelings were initially just another way for Dark to maintain control of the situation (or so he thought), but Damien was hoping it would only be a matter of time until Dark finally made a romantic move that didn’t involve the bedroom. Living in such close proximity to Damien and Quinn meant getting used to their personalities, habits, and routines… and feeling some way about it. Soft things.

The first time Dark noticed that he was smiling fondly at Damien, he spiraled into an intense and prolonged internal debate. Fondness wasn’t an emotion he was familiar with and it was making him lose sight of his goals. The solution was simple: Damien was ruining him, so Dark needed to kill him. But… he shouldn’t be so hasty. Perhaps Damien was still useful. Did he… care?!

After grappling with the realization that Damien’s feelings were apparently contagious, he is currently satisfied with his decision to not kill his partner because if this is what love feels like then he’d just have to be okay with it. As it turns out, it’s really nice to feel comfortable enough with someone to let them watch his back for once instead of pushing them away. This is what he’d been missing out on all those years, so maybe he can allow himself to want it.

There is more to this story (more characters and more development), but this summarizes how their found family got here pretty well.

If you have a Toyhou.se account, you can take a peek at Dark’s current in-progress profile and see more images of him here, and you can also find Damien’s profile/gallery here. They’re a bit threadbare right now, since we’ve only recently gotten started on that site, but we’re making progress!!

More art can be found on Kieran’s instagram: kieranology.artz

Kieran also made an in-character aesthetic blog for Damien, which you can find here if you’re interested in seeing what kind of blog he would have (nugoth and vampires; warning for blood, suggestive, and simulated gore content): @damienxdeadly

Aesthetic Moon Divider found here.

[zzariyo]

I said I gave up. I lied

now that i have actual maybe designs for the main guys, i really wish i remembered the……story. LOL

[mercuryislove]

Don’t hate me but… I kinda want you to answer all of the deep dive WIP asks 🥺 if that’s unreasonable tho, just 2, 9, and 10 please!

I am SORRY for the delay!!! i answered every question for BOTH projects so you're in for like.... several thousand words of shit that makes absolutely no sense, but i hope you you enjoy it! :)

1. Who are two characters that don't like each other? What do they reveal about each other to the readers? Will they ever learn to put aside their differences?

White Crane: okay this is hard because like. so many people do not like each other. (I know I made a post once about how terrible it would be to be one of twenty-eight people that have the power of dead gods but are trapped in stupid human bodies and you're all a thousand years old and hate each other so so so so so much because you all SUCK.) But for the sake of simplicity, I will talk about Ciaran and Sihla who never got along but only played nice to keep Anwei happy. They absolutely do NOT put aside their differences lmao once everything kind of, um, blows up between the three of them, all they want to do is KILL each other. She makes it her life's goal to make him suffer, and he basically loses his sanity in the process of trying to find a way to kill her for good. The beef is unbelievable. ANYWAY, what they reveal about each other is that Ciaran is not nearly as innocent in anything as he likes to pretend and Sihla is not as guilty as everyone says she is. I mean, she is still a terrible person in many ways, but that does not excuse the things he did to her all those years ago. She hates him for many, many good reasons.

Old Blood: Andhira HATES the entire Ekion family, but specifically the oldest son (who does not have an official name yet.... oops). He doesn't much care for her either but is usually too busy trying to better his social standing to worry too much about her. Except when they're in the same room together (which happens semi-regularly because her brother is kind of in love with him lmao). They hate each other for the exact same reason and it's that they're both SO arrogant. They look down on everyone around them (which in Andhira's case is like. fair. She's the firstborn of the two most powerful people on the planet, and the only person that comes close to that level of power is her twin brother who was born a mere fourteen minutes after her) but think the other is completely unjustified in their actions. Really all it reveals to a reader is that they both kind of suck and need to get over themselves because all that behavior does is make people resent you. They only put aside their differences because she does kind of need his help once or twice, but they would gladly spit in each other's face and/or push each other down a flight of stairs in the name of pettiness.

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2. What do you hope your readers will take away from your wip? Is there an intentional theme to the story?

These can be answered together! I started writing these stories because I wanted to have fun but they've both kind of morphed into a long-winded way of saying that like. it's okay to be messed up and hate yourself and have major internal struggles because there are people who still love you. I KNOW it doesn't sound like that from uhhhhhh literally everything I've ever said about this stuff but bear with me. The BIG theme is that love is EVERYTHING. All kinds of love. It's the reason to keep on going. You are never alone, even strangers can love you in their own way, etc etc etc etc. Also gay love fucking prevails always and forever.

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3. What do you love most about your protagonist?

Yixing is funny and weird and definitely a horse girl and he kind of sucks sometimes because he's stubborn as hell and has terrible people skills and maybe also a drinking problem, but he is kind and empathetic and despite the absolute hell he's lived through, he still sees the good in people and knows that it's easy to make mistakes and that most people deserve second chances in life. Also I like him because he is without a doubt the ideal man and I made him that way on purpose. And god I wish we could drink together. I'm talking stumbling drunk, crying on the bathroom floor, please-hold-my-hair-i'm-about-to-throw-up kind of drinking. We would have a great time being stupid together I think.

Vera is resilient and mean and stubborn and cold and off-putting and hard to get to know, and she sucks for those reasons but it's also why I love her so much. She has also lived through hell and it didn't make her try to see the good in people like Yixing does. It just made her bitter and resentful. She warms up over time, but she fights tooth and nail against it. I also love her so much because she is the archetype of like. the washed up former prodigy that has to return sort of against her will to her old life, and she realizes that she misses it in some ways but also remembers exactly why she left. I would Not want to drink with her (because she doesn't drink anymore), but I would love to take one of her art classes.

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4. Is there anything in the story that is implied but not directly stated? Will this become more relevant later on? How perceptive would a reader have to be to pick up on this?

White Crane: This is hard because I'm so invested in my own shit that it feels obvious to me, but I try to lay out a little candy trail that tells the reader that Ciaran and Anwei are Not What They Seem right from the start. It’s hard to explain without specific examples but it’s in the way they talk, they way they interact with other people, the way certain things they say don’t line up, etc etc etc. And there is a Big Hint of what will happen to Ciaran in the second and third installment, but idk if that counts. Also there are definitely implications that Yixing is trans but that's neither here nor there (honestly I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not he should be explicitly trans or if it should be left to reader interpretation because well... I don’t know if I'm capable of writing the nuance of transness because I'm not trans despite my complex and confusing relationship with gender but I'm also not a thirty-something year old Asian man NOR am I a god NOR am I a former vampire hunter NOR am I like. any of the things I write about other than a mean lesbian so. who knows?)

Old Blood: TRUE FANS already know this one, but regular degular readers that haven't participated in funny question friday or read my random late night posting would not immediately know that Josef and the Sovereign were once involved. Basically the only characters in the story that know are Josef, Luka, the Sovereign himself, and Tahire. But there are definitely some hints peppered throughout conversations and perhaps some photos and trinkets that Josef has kept after all this time... It has like no weight on the events of the story but I just think it's fun. Once again I am way too invested to know if it's easy to pick up on or not but I think it takes some theorizing about maybe? Other than that there aren’t any significant secrets.

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5. Which character has the most intricate backstory? Is this backstory common knowledge from the start, or is it revealed later on? How does the backstory affect the narrative?

White Crane: this is unfair because some of the characters are almost a thousand years old and some of them are like. 35. I DO have a full timeline written out of the thousand years of history that Ciaran and Anwei have lived through, if that counts as an answer. Like it doesn't have every single day and year, but it has all the big events for sure. Barring that, Yixing definitely has a pretty complex backstory. The man gets around lol and I try (and maybe fail?) to make him seem not too complex initially but then things get revealed and you learn more about him and are like “oh my god no wonder this man has Problems.” Also if he was like. “normal” and perhaps “well-adjusted” the story would not exist at all because he is the way he is and makes some of the stupid decisions he does because of his weird little life.

Old Blood: ONCE AGAIN, this is unfair because the Sovereign is like older than god. And Vera is 37. But like. I haven't fleshed him or any of the old ass vampires out nearly as much as Vera so there's your answer I guess? And I guess the important things are known from the start (that she was a prodigy, that she retired because terrible shit happened and she couldn't handle it, that she suffers from significant ptsd because of it, etc), but there is a lot of detail that doesn't come out until much later when she has to confront her Feelings (ewww feelings). Uh... the backstory affects the narrative because it wouldn't exist at all if Vera wasn't plagued by her fucked up blood nightmares lol

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6. Which two characters have the most complicated relationship? How does their relationship develop over time?

White Crane: Ciaran and Anwei totally. They love each other because they're brother and sister and were all the other had for a VERY long time (and even when they were still uh mortal, they relied on each other constantly), but also they hate each other because they're brother and sister. You know how it is with siblings. I love my brother and sister to pieces but I can't imagine being immortal and having to put up with the both of them for all eternity (sorry guys if you are reading this somehow.... I love you but we are all so annoying god bless). They handled their newfound godhood very, very, very differently and it kind of colors their relationship for the rest of time. There were times where they were extremely codependent and other times where they didn't speak to each other for DECADES. At the start of our story, they're on much better terms and have buried all their hatchets, but it doesn't take much for that to change....

Old Blood: Probably Vera and Andhira? They're only brought together because of their shared fucked up blood nightmares, and neither of them like that thought. They both resent the other for everything they are, and Vera is pretty much completely hostile to Andhira about it for a long time (and Andhira is only just barely cordial lol), but obviously a significant part of the plot revolves around them like. falling in love so they DO get over it after a while :)

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7. What is the most heart-wrenching scene in your wip? Why?

White Crane: When Yixing fucking DIES. I feel like this one should be self-explanatory. But I mean if you would like further explanation, it's unpleasant and slow and agonizing and nobody can do anything to stop it (haha....... unless?) so Ciaran gets to hold him for a long time and feel really bad about it lol

Old Blood: idk if there are any really heart-wrenching scenes but there are definitely some miserable and uncomfortable scenes like where Vera relives in vivid detail the days that she witnessed the gruesome deaths of her young apprentice and her last lover. They're upsetting because those are the two days that basically ruined her life (and one was the final straw that sent her spiraling completely out of control) and it's painful to watch her have to live with the guilt of what happened even if it wasn't her fault.

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8. What is a song that you associate with your wip? Explain.

White Crane: not to be basic but absolutely without a doubt in my stupid mind “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears lol it's because uh. well. Everybody wants to rule the world right? Basically way back in 2019 when I was crafting the ideas for the dnd campaign that became this thing instead, I was definitely having a metal gear moment (honestly I’m about to have a metal gear moment NOW lol) and was listening to a lot of like. mgs adjacent music and latched onto this song (and also promises, promises by naked eyes lmao) as some like thematic element. Like my brain making amvs. You know how it is. ANYWAY the point is. The concept was originally way different and was supposed to be more about the immediate aftermath of the so-called end of the world (yes Yixing was still there and yes he was still just some guy), and it focused a lot more on power struggles between all of these insane people that were granted godhood in the wake of the dying world. Which........ is something I'd like to write about at some point because it's intriguing in its own way but at the time I was unequipped to write about that when I really just wanted to write about people who are, for all intents and purposes, quite average getting caught up in the batshit drama of higher powers. (fun fact: Ciaran was supposed to be a tyrant king that ran a death cult and Anwei and Yixing were working together to figure out a way to kill him. Which is. Kind of what my dnd campaign is like now lol BASICALLY he's like if Big Boss was unkillable and could also rip souls out of people's bodies and eat them. I absolutely do not remember what this question originally was. Something about a song?)

Old Blood: THIS is the reason it took me so long to answer this whole thing. I thought long and hard and looked through all my playlists and listened to random songs that came to mind but it turns out the song I was looking for was right in front of me the whole time. DUH. It's “Golden Light” by Twin Shadow :) In my humble homo interpretation, I think it's a song about being afraid to fall in love and. Well. That's the whole point. Also #spoilers but the first time Vera sees Andhira and is like “oops I think I have feelings” is when they've just arrived at Andhira's home and the sun is rising and she looks over at her as they stand at the top of a hill and she has her eyes closed to the sun and she's bathed in golden light and OOUGGGGHGHHH poetic cinema. (honorable mention goes to “Groove is in the Heart” by Deee-lite because it’s quintessential early 90s music that Vera would be super into)

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9. What does your protagonist want most? What would they do to achieve this? What is something they wouldn't do to achieve this?

White Crane: Yixing wants to be happy for once. Like actually really happy instead of just. getting by. There's a scene where they're making wishes for the next seasons during the summer solstice and someone asks what he wants and he's like “uh I guess I want to still be alive at the end of the year?” and the other person is like “isn't that what everyone wants? Raise the fucking bar please. What do you REALLY want?” and he's stands there for a really long time and thinks about it before finally saying “I think I just want to be happy for once” and everyone else is like. wow. Way to kill the fucking mood dude. Anyway. He has had fleeting moments of happiness in his life but wants nothing more than to feel that way forever. It's kind of hard to say what he wouldn't do for that because like. there's not really much you CAN do in the first place, so I feel like there's even less you couldn't do. I guess he wouldn't like sell his soul to the devil or something lmao (though by being involved with Ciaran he's pretty much halfway there)

Old Blood: to be left alone. Vera just wants a normal life. She really truly does want to pretend that none of the horrible shit happened to her and that she was never a world-famous hunter. And she wants to teach art classes and live a quiet life!!! I mean, she is already mostly doing that exact thing when we first meet her, but obviously she has some hindrances (aka fucked up blood nightmares). She is begrudgingly helping Andhira because she assumes that will fix her problem and that she'll be able to get to that quiet living as soon as all is said and done. The only thing she really wouldn't do to get what she wants is like... live somewhere far away from Josef and Luka lol She likes having them close by more than she wants to be left alone.

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10. Within your story's world, were there any events that impacted every character (or most characters)? How would they be different if this event never happened? (Alternatively, erase an important even from on character's backstory and imagine where they'd be now.)

White Crane: well. If the stupid old gods didn't all kill themselves and almost end the world then I guess none of this story would exist lol But the actual answer is like. If Yixing had never run out on his girlfriend of ten years then he wouldn't have moved across the continent to Jengmi and wouldn't have made a name for himself way out there and wouldn't have been scouted and recruited and wouldn't have met Ciaran or Anwei and wouldn't have gotten in the middle of the batshit grudge between a bunch of ancient petty gay people and wouldn't have DIED and wouldn't have made one of the ancient petty gay people in particular lose his grip on his humanity via a lust for power in a desperate attempt to guarantee his safety and wouldn't have been the reason that tens of thousands of people die in his name and wouldn't have accidentally set off a chain of events that resulted in him having to hunt down and kill the Actual God that started it all in a fit of jealous rage. So like. maybe he should have just gone through with the wedding. All things considered, his life would have been way less stressful.

Old Blood: uhhh, that's tough because the stuff that happens only really has any effect on the mortal characters (I mean yeah people still try to kill the Sovereign but they're too dumb to know the ACTUAL way to kill him.... haha unless??), so it would be more like a what if Vera didn't witness the violent deaths of both her apprentice and her lover and have a full blown nervous breakdown and abandon her career? Well...... I think most things in the plot would transpire more or less the same, except she would be WAY less pissed off about it. In fact, she would probably be hyped as hell to get the chance to make the acquaintance of the Sovereign's family like Josef had before her. The thought of Vera being upbeat and not a sleep-deprived asshole that hates being dragged back to her old life..... ew. Not that I enjoy her suffering but you know what I mean. It just wouldn't be the same.

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11. What is something from your wip that you just really want to ramble about?

Are you sure you're ready for this. This is going to be so so so so long I'm sorry in advance. It's Saturday night and I'm alone and kind of sad so I'm just going to let loose.

As I hone down plot elements for next two installments in my little trilogy, I have kind of become obsessed with the passage of time and how different it must feel to someone that, well, lives forever. One of the ways I'd written (that has since been kind of changed) for Yixing to start to figure out what Ciaran really is was that he would casually be looking through his bookshelf and find an old photograph of Ciaran, Anwei, and their mom standing backstage together after one of his performances. And when he eventually asks Ciaran about it, he gets upset because how dare you touch the one thing I have left to remember my mother? To remember what my life used to be like? There are so many names and faces and places and foods and sensations that I've forgotten in the 940 years I've lived like this and I would give anything I have to see any of it just one more time because I didn't know that the last time I would ever speak to my mom we would have an argument on the phone about how I need to go to the temple and pray for good fortune on my birthday, or that the last time I would ever see my best friend would be at 6am when we both came into the studio to practice and he asked me to go out to breakfast and I said no because I thought a nap would be more important. And there are so many people that I've watched die whose names I never learned and whose faces I forgot the moment I turned away, and there are so many others that I loved so dearly that I had to leave behind because they grew old and I didn't. And I have lived lifetimes in solitude to keep myself a secret from other people and I have died more than any person should ever have to die and I have witnessed atrocities no one should ever witness and I hate everything about this life so much but I love everything about this life so much and I wouldn’t trade it for anything but I think I would give it all away in an instant if only to remember the scent of my mother's favorite perfume and I think I would give it all away in an instant if it meant I didn't have to watch you turn to dust in my arms.

ANYWAY. I think a lot about the agony of loving things that aren't permanent and how it really DOES drive you mad because lately I have been unbelievably nostalgic for certain things that weren't even that long ago but..... I didn't appreciate them at the time and I feel so guilty about it. (And like. I too would give up my entire life to be able to remember the scent of my grandmother's favorite perfume.) And all my pent-up sadness is for things that only happened in my childhood. I have pictures and videos and other people to share those memories with, but what does it feel like to be one of very few people that watched the entire world fall apart and rebuild itself and have nothing to hold onto from that time? What does it feel like to foster dozens of generations of children and outlive every single one of them? What does it feel like to have only fragments of memories of entire lifetimes? How lonely is it? I mean, Ciaran and Anwei have each other and that makes a difference but it still has to be the most isolating feeling. And then there's the pain that comes with memories that have faded or otherwise become hazy. I doubt either of them remember their father's face. They hadn't seen him in years even before it all happened. If it wasn't for that single photo he has, they wouldn't remember their mother's face either. Do they still remember her name? Or her birthday? Do they remember anyone else? Cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, coworkers? If they do, do they even want to talk about it? One thing I worry about in my own life (and this is how I know I have Problems) is that I'm so afraid that talking about memories will alter them somehow. There are so many things that I don't even like to share because once the words are spoken the little vhs tape that has all my memories has been recorded over, even if it's just by a single frame. Something about it has been changed forever each time I talk about it. Do they feel the same way and keep things to themselves instead of sharing the sadness? I think maybe they used to talk about the “old days” or whatever much more often back in the past, but as the years went by.... they just learned to keep it to themselves.

I think maybe I have a lot of anxiety about the passage of time and of being forgotten!

Anyway again. The passage of time drives me insane. And I think it would make me even more insane if I had been chosen to carry the mantle of a dead god and would live forever. My dog died a year ago and I still cry like every single day thinking about her. If I was doomed to live forever I don't know how the sadness wouldn't swallow me whole! No wonder all the people in this book are fucking CRAZY!!

And don't even get me started on the Sovereign lol he's like “oh boo-hoo you've lived for not even a thousand years? Bitch they hadn't invented fucking GLASS yet when I was born. The horse wasn't domesticated yet. Cry harder!!”

[thecinephale]

Super Girl: The Effort to Look Female

Harrisonburg is not rural Virginia. It’s a city. It inhabits over 50,000 people, includes James Madison University, and has gone Democrat every presidential election since 2008. Still, I spent the last few weeks with my stomach in knots, working out a strategy for my weekend there. While the wedding I was attending was right on the JMU campus, our Airbnb was deeper into Rockingham County, my girlfriend’s grandma lives in Stuart’s Draft, and we had to drive through all sorts of places to get there and back from Brooklyn. 

And as my friend Kelly said, “It’s a college town, sure, but there IS a Cracker Barrel.”

***

Next week marks my one year on hormones. Some trans people call this a second birthday, but for me that date is too nebulous. Do I claim the doctor’s appointment that acted as a first consultation? Or the first time I let a green oval of estrogen slowly dissolve under my tongue? Maybe it’s a month further when my bloodwork came back normal and I began taking a proper dosage?  

I prefer to think of transitioning as a process with many beginnings. If I had to pick a date, it would be May 12, 2017, when I fully came out to myself. But even this erases the person I was at 16 who dressed in drag for the first time. 

A year on hormones doesn’t feel like a landmark. It feels like I’m running out of time. Everyone is different, but I know generally there’s a timeline of when changes occur and when they stop. Some people claim it’s a four year process, but most people see the majority of changes in the first two years. I’m halfway there.

***

Sunday night the first trans superhero appeared in mainstream media. Nicole Maines portrayed the character of Nia Nal on The CW’s Supergirl in its fourth season premiere. Like hormone birthdays, this monumental event can’t be reduced to a single day. Nia isn’t a superhero yet, for now just a reporter working under Kara/Supergirl. And her transness has not been discussed. Both are known because they were announced at Comic Con back in July. The first trans superhero in mainstream media, played by a trans actress. 

Nicole Maines knew she was trans when she was 3 years old. By the time she was able to vote, Maines had successfully sued her school district, ensuring basic human rights for all transgender students in her home state of Maine. The CW’s marketing team has played up the “real life hero plays on-screen hero” angle and they’re not wrong. 

I knew I was trans 20 years later in my life, after I’d finished my first puberty and voted in two presidential elections. Maines and I have drastically different experiences of transness, and yet I spent the last several months watching 65 episodes of Supergirl (plus crossovers!) to prepare for her debut this week. Sure, most trans women don’t look like Nicole Maines. Most cis women don’t look like Melissa Benoist. This is how this works.

***

Once I decided to go on this trip to Virginia, I also had to decide how I was going to present. I’ve been, as they say, full-time since February. Some days I just wear jeans and a t-shirt, like most women, but it’s been a long time since I’ve actively pretended to be a man. It always made me feel awful and as my breasts grew (now at a C cup!) it became more and more difficult. My girlfriend’s extended family knew she was dating a woman, but didn’t know I was trans. I felt up to the challenge. This weekend I was just a woman. Period.

It’s been my experience that the most mindlessly validating individuals are those I’d least expect: catcallers and the elderly. My guess is they have limited knowledge of transness and classically feminine signifiers like a skirt or long hair makes their animal brain think woman. Of course, if they notice their “mistake” the catcallers will be especially cruel. Still, these experiences factored into my expectation that a high femme presentation would get me through this weekend. 

I have no idea what I look like. I’m not sure I ever will. Intellectually I know my face has feminized, but I don’t know how much. I don’t know why sometimes I get correctly gendered, but mostly not. I don’t know if people are just humoring me or saying what they’re supposed to or being kind when they say “Miss.”

I appreciate this effort, but it’s not what I want. I want to look in the mirror and see a woman, I want the people in my life to look at me and see a woman, and I want strangers to look at me and see a woman.

In Virginia, nobody saw a woman.

***

The most trans-related scene in Nicole Maines’ first episode didn’t feature her at all. Martian J’onn J’onzz (David Harewood), recently retired, has joined an alien support group. While Supergirl has previously leaned hard on the alien as immigrant analogy, this scene isn’t the first time the show has equated alien status with queerness. Season two introduced an underground alien bar that was obviously meant to evoke the historic haven of the gay bar.  

An alien that looks human begins by saying he’s at the group to share his happiness. “For the first time since I’ve been on this planet I feel like I fit in,” he says with a smile. “And it’s because of this.” He taps a device on the side of his head that reveals his true alien form, before switching back to the human veneer. 

An older alien who looks human but has pointed ears and tusks on his forearms pushes back. “Who decides what’s normal? Why should we have to wear these devices that change our appearance so we can be tolerated?”

The first alien responds with the obvious: “Well, that’s easy for you to say. You just look like a Tolkien fan.”

***

Whether we want to look cis and whether we have the ability to look cis is certain to be a heated topic between trans people, because it’s often a heated topic within ourselves. Everyone is taking stock of what they have and what they want. And sometimes it’s impossible to distinguish what we truly need to feel okay and what society tells us we need. I identify as a binary trans woman, not because I believe in the gender binary, but because I’m close enough that I can live (for now) with that conformity. The more gender non-conforming you naturally are and the more gender non-conforming you desire to be the more external pressure you’ll receive.

I’m 5’5 and 110 pounds and within my first three months on hormones I’d developed breasts. These are my natural privileges. My body hair, facial hair, and Adam’s apple are my negatives. The curly hair on my head and my masculine but not that masculine face are up for debate. Every week I get an hour of electrolysis done on my face, which is the process of hot needles and tweezers manually killing every hair follicle. It’s more painful than it sounds. I’m one year into this process and have at least another year left. It costs $75 per session and my ability to afford that at all is another privilege, while the huge chunk of my income that takes up is another negative.

My facial hair is my biggest insecurity and whenever I get misgendered I assume that’s the reason. My mom regularly insists it’s my Adam’s apple and if I would just get that surgically reduced I’d be able to “pass.” The truth is probably more complex. A mix between stubble, the Adam’s apple, and the small characteristics that are targeted in a comprehensive surgical process known as Facial Feminization Surgery. 

I’ve never wanted FFS. I can’t even decide if I want the Adam’s apple surgery. Going on hormones was such an easy, obvious choice for me, but these surgeries can feel like a betrayal of my transness. I don’t want to look cis. But I do want to look like a woman. I’ve started to worry that for the rest of the world those will always be the same thing.

Due to my size I thought I would be like the alien who looks pretty normal but just has tusks on his arms. I could proudly be like, “Look at my tusks/Adam’s apple! I’m an alien/trans. Deal with it.” Maybe I’m really the other alien, whose life is consumed by their alien status unless they change themselves. Or maybe we’re all both aliens and the support group is our minds. Two sides debating, one that looks in the mirror and sees a woman with some unique qualities, another that looks in the mirror and sees a man who needs to change.

***

I wasn’t misgendered until halfway through the wedding reception. I certainly got stares, but it was unclear whether those were lesbian couple stares or transgender stares. I chose to think lesbian couple. Last week my electrologist worked under my jaw so I could wear a full face of makeup. I wore a blue and white Kate Spade dress that was conservative yet flattering. I had on heels and my hair was up. It was the most femme I’ve ever looked. If a random catcaller correctly gendered me the week before when I was wearing a sweatshirt and no makeup, then surely my gender had registered now.

Again, the goal is not that no one knows I’m trans. The goal is for people, without thinking, to say “she.” If afterwards they go “Hmm is this one of those transgendereds I’ve read about?” then fine. But I want to win over the gut instinct. I know this is wrong. Our identities shouldn’t require any external validation. But they do. 

Once I began interacting with people and there was cause to gender me, I did about 50/50. But even when correct there was a pause. I suddenly felt very foolish. This idea I had that I was my harshest critic, that the man I saw in the mirror would look like a woman to these Virginians, was painfully misguided. I look how I look. It will continue to change gradually as I continue hormones and electrolysis, and this may or may not change how others perceive me. I can then choose to alter my appearance further with surgeries or, simply, accept the way I look.

***

“There’s nothing slight about fashion,” Nia says pitching a story. “It’s one of the most visceral forms of art. What we choose to wear tells a story about who we are.” A trans woman believing in the power of presentation is not exactly groundbreaking. But the show has always been filled with clichés that work because they’re true. 

What struck me most watching Maines’ debut was the immediate fondness I had for her. This, of course, has as much to do with talent and charisma as it does transness. Maines injects Nia with an immediate likability, an awkwardness that recalls season one Kara, but with an added vulnerability. I’d framed this character as a necessary first step. Sure, she looks like Nicole Maines… still a trans superhero! But watching her on screen I became very aware that I don’t know Nicole’s insecurities and I don’t know Nia’s. I don’t know anybody’s experience of transness except my own. I don’t even know what gender is or what it means to be trans. Nobody does. We may craft personal narratives to decipher our wants and needs. Cis society may craft narratives to understand, or, more commonly, to erase. But we don’t know. I don’t know why sometimes I look one way to some people and a different way to other people. I don’t know why I have some insecurities and not others. I don’t know why some clothes feel good. Or why some do not.

What I do know is that it felt good to see Nicole Maines on screen. I know that when Kara looked at her and said, “Oh my God. You’re me,” I thought, no. She’s me.